In recent years, the Army has experimented with a number of different wing deployment concepts for cruise type missiles, such as the FOG-M. The objective of having a folding wing is to achieve a low missile packing volume in a launcher or packing container prior to launch. Prior to or at launch, the wings are deployed to achieve a flight configuration. The Army has experimented with cloth, forward folding, aft folding and rotating wings.
The wings of the present invention may be folded along two different axis to achieve a low missile packing volume.
The wings are capable of being deployed very fast (less than 600 ms) and are self locking and require no special detents.
The deployment mechanism is rather simple, and the structure is aerodynamically clean with no visible external deployment hardware after the wing is deployed.